Worth of Souls (men vs women)

[hmb]

As I was reading through the "Oops. Just Outed Myself as a Non-Believer to Family," I got to wondering about members' "saving" tactics. No Tof said that kids left, now he left. His DW is still TBM. Do you think there is any difference in trying to re-activate an important, PH holding male than a lowly female? When I left, there was the usual concern, but it died off rather quickly (not complaining about that). My DH is a nevermo, so different than a temple married couple. I was already 3rd class; female, married to a nevermo. Poor pitiful me ).

[Linked]

I didn't see a different value in souls much in my time deep in the heart of the church. Sometimes as missionaries we were told to focus on possible PH holders, but I always thought that was to avoid possible attraction issues and because they needed more men for callings and there were already more women than men.

My heart felt similarly for men's and women's souls anyway.

[MerrieMiss]

I remember being taught/told that it was important to find a strong Priesthood leader to marry because when a man leaves the church the family follows. This was then reinforced in those missionary meetings where they give out statistics like, “If you can reactivate/retain a man/husband/father the family is more likely to follow, whereas with a woman, the husband is less likely to follow her example, and the children too, because they’d rather not go to church.”

Also, quite a while back, I remember reading some kind of analysis/report (not LDS) that stated when men leave church/religion their children are more likely to follow, not the case with women. Can’t remember where I read it and can’t find it after a brief search. Maybe someone here has read it.

[nibbler]

The worth of souls? About three-fiddy.

There's some pressure to reactivate males. Church growth is more tightly coupled with full tithe paying PH holders than it is raw numbers.

[alas]

I know with new converts the preference for men is huge, verbalized frequently, and in some missions, teaching single sisters, or wives without the husband present is actually prohibited. They say they need priesthood leaders, or that they don't want to cause marital problems by teaching a woman and not her husband, but then are perfectly willing to teach a man without his wife being there to learn too, so they sure don't worry about marital problems caused by converting only one spouse when the spouse is male.

When my husband was in Austria, the missionaries were told not to waste their time on women unless there was a man they would be bringing in. Even if the woman had male children, they were not to spend time with them. Now, if they came requesting baptism, they could be baptized. So, they were not totally worthless, just next to worthless.

My daughter was being stalked by a creep in highschool. The creep started investigating the church as a way of stalking her. That way, he could stalk her at church too. Seriously, he waited for her outside of all of her classes and walked with her to the next class and stayed with her till the bell rang. How was he leaving all his classes early and arriving late and not getting suspended? Anyway, she tried to talk to her YW leader about what to do about the creep who threatened her, her pets, or suicide if she broke up with him. He was very controlling and emotionally abusive. The YW leader listened to all of his sick abusive behavior and told my daughter *not* to break up with him because he would stop investigating the church and the church would lose a potential priesthood holder. Yes, my daughter was supposed to continue having the life of her cat threatened and her own safety threatened so that the creep would join the church because the church will take anything that has a penis and pretends to be human over the safety and wellbeing of its women.

Yup, that is the value of a woman compared to a man. Who cares if he is abusing the woman. She is supposed to take it so that the church can have one more outright evil priesthood holder.

Just how much respect do we really have for priesthood when they don't care about his righteousness AT. ALL. Just that he has a priesthood antenna and walks upright.

And among members, when a husband is abusive, the church as a rule supports and sides with the husband. I spent a few years working with domestic violence and siding with the husband was the RULE, not the exception. But the church swears it does not condone abuse. BS.

My father was excommunicated for sexually abusing me. But guess who was the only member of the family they bothered trying to get or keep active. The HT would call and only talk to him about when to visit and did not care that he never bothered to tell his wife or that he actually set up a time for them to visit when she was not there. She did not see *her* home teachers for two years because her excommunicated husband told the HT to come when she was not home. As if she was avoiding the HT. No, it was all my a**h**** father. But the home teacher never once talked to her. He called the nonmember and scheduled an appointment. I went inactive a few times during my father's years of excommunication, my mother went inactive. Nobody cared. But they bent over backwards and fell on their faces trying to get him attending church. My mother even told a bishop that the church was not big enough for both her and her husband. But the bishop never bothered to ask what she meant, but continued to act as if bringing him back into the church would magically fix the whole family.

When they decided my father had repented enough to be rebaptised, they were required to ask his victims if they felt he was repentant. Both my mother and I said a resounding "NO" and they baptized him anyway because we were just women and he was a potential priesthood.

So, my experience taught me that Mormon God hates his daughters and loves his sons no matter what kind of jerk or creep the men are. Is it any wonder that I no longer worship "Mormon God"?

[Give It Time]

Back when I was TBM, my son was made the president of his deacons quorum. Before they extended the call, they ran it by my (then) husband as a courtesy. My husband told me they had checked with him as a courtesy. He appreciated the gesture. I responded that seeing as how I'm the one who has to see to it that his clothes are laundered and ready to go, I'm the one who is in charge of getting the meals on the table and needs to make sure he is fed and can get out the door. I'm the one who is in charge of the family schedule and needs to make sure the homework is done. Seeing as how this really impacts me more than anyone else in the family, it seems to me the person they need to ask "as a courtesy", is the mother, but of course they don't and they won't.

My husband just looked at me stunned and floored. It hadn't occurred to him, this might impact me. He didn't apologise and he was utterly flabbergasted.

In fact, there was an apostle called in the last batch, who's wife wasn't even in the room when the calling was extended. This is a calling they will impact her life in nearly every way for the rest of her life and she wasn't even asked if she could support her husband in this. She didn't even know! Prospective bishops' wives are treated better.

Women are just an afterthought in this church.

[Korihor]

Church growth and management depends on PH. As a Sista - you'll never be able to overcome that hurdle.

That being said, a key measure of stability is TR holding endowed members. That is shared about equally between the genders.

Plus, the sisters have divine nature, so that's gotta be worth something.

If Sister is ailing, the RS will come to her aid. If a PH is ailing, the ward will come to his aid.

[No Tof]

The longer I'm away from the ward the more I think the worth of souls is very little really.

For those who continue to play in the game, it looks as though the misogyny from the beginning isn't changing anytime soon.

For those who leave, it seems the bother to win back your trust isn't worth the effort. Not to mention the problem it is to find meaningful answers to those pesky questions about the church no one can/will answer.

[Just This Guy]

As far as reactivation, I think they do tend to have better luck with women. I know I did on my mission. I managed to reactivate several older women and there were plenty of women who like the Missionaries. In my ward, once in a while they will reach out to DW and try talking to her. They won't even talk to me, let alone try to have a conversation. They have basically ignored me since I stopped attending years ago.

This is just my observations, and is subject to much error and bias and heavy generalization:

Women tend to have a more emotional connection to the church. This works both ways. They can be very attached to the church and can have a lot of trouble breaking away. However, if something happens and they do break away, the ones I know who have tend to carry a much stronger grudge and suspicion against the church. Women tend to be more impacted by things like polygamy and contemporary interaction with members, or the church's attitude against homosexuals.

Men tend to be more analytical and don't get as tied to things. The statistics show that men are more likely to leave the church. I think part of it is that men tend to have higher expectations from the church and the social structures. Things like historicity and truth claims are more important to us.

Women tend to be more sociable and interactive with each other. This can work both ways in the church. The socialization can keep them in, but the gossip and cattiness can drive them away just as hard.

In reality it is very complicated for everyone, but this i trying to distill it down to very basics

[alas]

As far as reactivation, I think they do tend to have better luck with women. I know I did on my mission. I managed to reactivate several older women and there were plenty of women who like the Missionaries. In my ward, once in a while they will reach out to DW and try talking to her. They won't even talk to me, let alone try to have a conversation. They have basically ignored me since I stopped attending years ago.

This is just my observations, and is subject to much error and bias and heavy generalization:

Women tend to have a more emotional connection to the church. This works both ways. They can be very attached to the church and can have a lot of trouble breaking away. However, if something happens and they do break away, the ones I know who have tend to carry a much stronger grudge and suspicion against the church. Women tend to be more impacted by things like polygamy and contemporary interaction with members, or the church's attitude against homosexuals.

Men tend to be more analytical and don't get as tied to things. The statistics show that men are more likely to leave the church. I think part of it is that men tend to have higher expectations from the church and the social structures. Things like historicity and truth claims are more important to us.

Women tend to be more sociable and interactive with each other. This can work both ways in the church. The socialization can keep them in, but the gossip and cattiness can drive them away just as hard.

In reality it is very complicated for everyone, but this i trying to distill it down to very basics

It is interesting that women are easier to reactivate and easier to convert in the first place and also seem to leave less often. But I am going to explain that just a bit different than you did. I think the social aspects are there and more important to women, especially SAHMs. But women also seem easier to convert and new converts do not have the social ties yet. But I think the church uses emotional reasoning, the if it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside that proves it is true, and that just works better with many women than it does for your average man. Your average man wants logical consistency and doctrine, while your average woman wants the church to feel good.

So, yes, I think you are very right that women seem easier to activate. But that wasn't the question. The question in the OP was who has more value to the church?

I think there are less efforts to reactivate women in spite of the fact that it is generally easier, and if it doesn't work right off the bat, the reactivator moves on to try to reactivate someone else easier. The efforts are pretty much just the RS, while with the men, they seem to get every auxillery involved to work on children and wife to pressure/guilt the man back into activity.

Also, I think the fact that more men leave is seen as reason to put more effort into retaining the men, while they just take for granted that the women will stay. I think this is part of why so much more effort goes into the YM than the YW.

Of course, there is little effort aimed at retention (prevent people from going inactive) for either gender after marriage. If the church made elders Q more fun instead of making it so the Boy Scouts are the only ones having any fun, they might keep more men.